


What Happens on Sakaar

by PhantomEngineer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 14:27:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17941424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomEngineer/pseuds/PhantomEngineer
Summary: What happens on Sakaar stays on Sakaar as far as Loki is concerned. Unfortunately, what happened on Sakaar stays with him, even as they leave Sakaar far behind. As they return to the relationship they used to have, Thor can tell that not everything is the way it was even if Loki is still Loki.





	What Happens on Sakaar

**Author's Note:**

> Response to a prompt on the thorkiangstmeme.

Loki was probably the most excellent liar that Thor had ever met, with the possible exception of Odin whose secrets had, whether intentionally or not, caused a significant amount of the chaos and upheaval of the last few years of Thor’s life. Thor also knew that Loki would be highly offended if he was ever rated second best liar behind Odin, and Thor was far too aware of how fresh and new their return to camaraderie was. He didn’t want to risk anything.

Thor knew that Loki was lying. 

It wasn’t a clear lie, a specific set of words bathed in untruths. It was something more and something less, a subtle sensation that seemed to underpin everything. Every gesture, every utterance. Almost as if while he might have returned to acting like the Loki Thor used to know there was something else lurking beneath the surface. Not a lie that spelled doom for their people, not a lie that promised chaos and disaster. No promise of death or usurpation, just something that bothered Thor. Something that made him look at Loki even more than he would have done, even though it was harder now to hide where his gaze went. An unfortunate consequence of having only one eye, glances that he had been able to hide were now obvious as he turned his head.

Loki was beautiful and everyone knew it, including Loki. Fickle and charming, but no one who he loved and left had ever felt true anger. Rather they had all just been grateful for having briefly held his attention. Thor had never minded because it kept his brother from becoming bored and because he had always known that no matter what Loki would always return to him for their slow, agonised flirtations that gradually became so much more than that only to end so abruptly with Thor’s banishment and Loki’s fall from the Bifrost. 

Thor hadn’t noticed it when they first hugged, him throwing his arms desperately around Loki and clinging to him as through he was the only real thing left in the universe. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d buried his face in his brother’s hair, inhaled the lingering scent of smoke from the destruction of Asgard and found it to be the most wondrous perfume imaginable because no matter what may have been lost he had gained far more. He had Loki back, solid and real, finally by his side again.

He had noticed when Loki, just as eagerly as he, had jumped back into the relationship that had existed before Thor’s first, failed, coronation. He had noticed, because he had grown as a person just as Loki had wanted him to even if the execution of that character growth had not been of the variety Thor would have chosen. He had noticed because he knew Loki as well as anyone could know Loki, even as he knew that Loki was a complex tangle of concepts that would take many more millennia to even begin to unravel. He doubted it was even possible to know someone who was so changeable, so eternally in flux, and he gloried in being allowed to even attempt to consider those mysteries that he could spend his whole life never solving because Loki was supposed to be an enigma.

He noticed moments when Loki’s smile seemed too bright, when he looked at Thor and saw something else, even if Thor had no idea what. Just that his gaze for a few fleeting moments seemed to pass through him, that he trembled beneath Thor’s fingers in a way that made Thor uncomfortable, raising questions that vanished the moment Loki flicked back to being the same Loki he always had been, a mischievous tease full of laughter and delight, sometimes Thor’s brother, sometimes his sister. Always Thor’s and always hiding something so deep that it was buried beneath his bones. Loki had secrets because they made him who he was, but it had never been like this before. Even if Thor had not been as perceptive as he was now, gaining insight as he lost the sight of one eye, this was different from Loki’s other secrets.

And Thor said nothing as he knew that Loki had been right, that they had never been good at talking. What they had had always been unspoken, soft touches and trailing glances leading to hot kisses and the two of them sated and unravelled in each other’s arms. And that was why he knew without asking that there was something wrong, underneath all that was so very very right. He knew without Loki saying any words, because they might always tangle each other up in misunderstandings when they spoke the All-Tongue, the language understood by all and the language they could never communicate in fully with each other, but he could understand Loki’s body.

Thor had never really counted patience as one of his virtues, but he tried even though all he really wanted to do was to pin Loki down and force the answers from him. Only, where Loki had once gasped in delight at being pinned down, wriggling happily as he was trapped underneath Thor, he now tensed almost imperceptibly.

“I think we should take things slow,” he said, as he gazed down at Loki as her eyes seemed to look through him, seeing something else and he didn’t think he could bear to see the most beautiful eyes in the universe afraid. Loki had never been afraid of him, not even when they fought with their lives on the line. Loki had not been afraid when he led them to Jotenheim, Loki had not been afraid when fighting the Avengers. Loki had not been afraid of Hela or Ragnarok. Wary, yes, because Loki had always had far more common sense and foresight than Thor, but never truly afraid. Definitely not of Thor.

“Why?” Loki asked, a frantic expression on her face for the briefest hint of a moment, so fleeting that Thor thought he could well have imagined it. It was hard to see clearly in the dim light of their arbitrary night, especially with only one eye to see with. He found it easier to gauge whatever the truth might be from the erratic, ever-changing tension of her muscles that he could feel against his skin as he shifted to lie beside her, his arms gently wrapped around her like a mantle rather than a cage. 

“Because I love you,” Thor answered, which was a beautiful lie because it was also so very true. It was not the reason at all at the same time as it was the reason and everything in between. Thor did love Loki, adored her more than the stars. Not that Thor had ever had much interest in the stars, as they only really served as a method of navigation to him and honestly Loki was better at that sort of thing anyway, plus being trapped in a large vessel floating somewhat aimlessly through the stars really ripped all romance from them. But Thor still knew that to some people the stars were beautiful and romantic, and they couldn’t help but think that way as they had never had the good fortune of laying eyes on Loki. 

Her form rippled, leaving Thor holding his brother. It seemed to Thor as though this happened more and more the closer they were, as though Loki was running from memories imprinted on his skin but neither option allowed him to hide. Thor kissed him, not with a desperate passion as if the world was ending because it already had but with a gentle tenderness that could never manage to accurately express his adoration of Loki. Loki huffed, as Loki always did when Thor was sentimental, but Loki also kissed him back and then settled down to sleep, his face buried in Thor’s beard.

Thor did not sleep, lying awake feeling the gentle sensation of Loki’s breath against his throat. Satisfied because he had Loki there with him, and dissatisfied at the same time. Thoughts trailing through his head as his fingers trailed their way through Loki’s hair. Trying to piece it all together. Figure out something he probably should have figured out earlier but when he’d been younger he’d often left those things to Loki.

Loki had been different from the Loki Thor had thought he’d known after Thor’s banishment. The Loki that had lied out of malice, tricked and caused real damage rather than frivolous mischief. A god of lies rather than a god of mischief. An instigator of chaos, hard and bitter. Thor still didn’t know all the details, as so much of that was contained inside Loki’s head and Loki’s mind was a maze without a map. The paths changed intermittently, the centre was a fictional creation and there were almost certainly dragons who would eat any trespasser.

Loki had been even more different when he reappeared, back from the dead, on Earth poised to elevate himself to the position of a god to rule over all the people there. Thor had never questioned that, had never questioned what may have happened between those two moments in time, between the moment Loki slipped from his grasp and the moment he clenched his hand around Loki’s throat in the stormy skies. He had been too wrapped up in relief at having Loki back and the conflicting need to fight him so he could drag him back to Asgard. Then Thor had struggled to face him. Facing Loki in battle had been natural, because Loki was his everything and fighting was most of what Thor knew, but talking to his brother in a cell, looking through the barrier that separated them, that was unbearable.

And then Loki had been much more the Loki Thor had fallen in love with, even if Thor was still somewhat unimpressed with the whole leaving Odin in a retirement home thing. It did seem like the sort of thing Loki might have done, though only for a short period of time, as a joke when they had been much younger. Some silly chaos where Loki masqueraded as someone else to make them look ridiculous all to make Thor laugh though it hadn’t been a joke for Thor’s entertainment but something for his own gain, the betrayal of Loki’s faked death still too raw for there to be a funny side to anything. 

Loki shifted in his arms, tensing and trembling, changing forms subconsciously. Thor supposed that he was flattered that she was comfortable enough with him to do so. Thor was happy to be sleeping in a bed, even if it was on a spaceship and not in the castle of Asgard. It was better than the communal area the gladiators had shared. The place he had shared even more briefly with the Hulk had been an improvement, but still not somewhere he had felt particularly capable of actually relaxing. You didn’t sleep somewhere you were liable to be killed in your sleep. Or, at least, you didn’t sleep well.

He wondered where Loki had slept. Loki had been on Sakaar for longer than him, and had clearly landed herself in a superior class to Thor. Thor had to be honest with himself. He didn’t want to think too hard about how Loki had gained the favour of the Grandmaster. He knew that all the hints were there. He’d had the misfortune of accidentally watching some of the pornography that was embedded in the ship. He didn’t judge others for their tastes or preferences, especially seeing as his own was mostly focused on his sometimes brother and sometimes sister which some would consider to be a taboo (but then again they may simply have never met Loki because how anyone could not be in love with Loki was a mystery Thor had assumed he would simply never be able to solve), but he did really wish that he hadn’t seen it. Some warnings or a clearly labelled ‘off’ button would have been appreciated.

He liked to imagine that Loki had simply smiled and that had been that. He doubted it. He doubted it as much as he doubted that he would ever get a straight answer out of Loki because nothing about Loki had ever been straight. Maybe what Thor could imagine was worse than what might be real, maybe Thor was misunderstanding things. Maybe whatever it was that had made Loki uncomfortable with her own skin, with the brushes of flesh that had previously felt more natural than breathing, had occurred long before either of them had ever even known that Sakaar existed. 

All Thor really knew was that he was likely to be taking a lot of frustrations out on the poor Valkyrie under the guise of sparring. Letting his imagination run wild as he tried to keep himself distracted but ultimately trying to let Loki figure it out herself. Maybe one day she’d tell him, maybe it would remain another mystery like any other. Loki had never taken well to questioning and Thor had learnt that, knew that she was always herself even when she wasn’t quite herself.

And Thor loved Loki.


End file.
